All About PAGE JUMPS

Hi everyone! It’s me, Lorraine Reguly, your monthly contributor from Wording Well, here today to talk to you about page jumps. I know you will find this post useful, and I truly hope you take advantage of the benefits of the opportunity I give you at the end!

What are page jumps? What do they do? Why should bloggers use them, and when?

This post will answer all of these questions. I promise. Plus, I will make the whole concept of page jumps easy for you to understand, and teach you how to create them.

By the end of this article, I bet you will want to try experimenting with some page jumps of your own! You’ll be able to, too. 🙂 To help demonstrate how page jumps work, I have prepared a list of the contents of this article. Whichever link you click on will bring you to that particular section of the page!

Page Jumps – When to Use Them, + Why

Page jumps are most often used in long articles found on the internet and allow people to access information faster. Instead of scrolling down on the page, which can take many seconds or even minutes, a simple page jump link can be clicked, allowing for instant navigation. In today’s world, where this type of gratification is desired by busy people who don’t have time to waste, page jumps are a fantastic solution, and are welcomed by many!

Page jumps are also handy when you are posting lists. You can allow someone to jump to a particular item on your list that interests them, rather than making that person scroll down and look at each item.

Page jumps are commonly used on Wikipedia, the internet’s encyclopedia. If you have ever looked something up on this site, you’ve probably noticed that, after each definition, there is a Table of Contents, and that every item listed in it is an internal link that takes you to another spot on that page.

Page jumps can also be found in digital newsletters and other emails. Have you ever received an email that allowed you to jump to a particular section? I have! I’ve often wondered how to create them, too, and so I did some research on page jumps, and then put together this tutorial post to help demystify them for you and teach you how to use them.

1. The target and the link

The target is the place where you want your reader to jump to, and must be given a special name.

The link is where you want your reader to click from, and its code must include the special name of the target. (You will understand how this works in a minute. Keep reading!)

2. The text editor

You have to switch from the Visual to the Text editor in order to insert the special pieces of code for both the target and the link. This is important because your page jumps won’t work otherwise!

3. The special code

The code for your target is

<a name=”NAME OF TARGET”></a>

The code for your link text is

<a href=”#NAME OF TARGET”>LINK TEXT GOES HERE</a>

These two pieces of code can be copied and pasted — and then customized to suit your needs — straight from this page. These are the vital codes you need in order to create page jumps.

NOTE: The capitalized letters must be replaced with the name you have chosen! 🙂

What to do to create the page jump

First of all, write your post!

Secondly, determine where you want your page jumps to occur. In this post, I created a list of contents to help me do this.

Thirdly, decide on a special name to give each of your targets. In this post, I simply decided to use the names: Contents, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7. You can use any name you want! Of course, it’s a lot easier to keep track of what you are doing if you select names that are relevant to your list. 😉

Fourthly, you need to mark each target with the name you chose to use. You do this by using the target code and pasting it immediately before your target.

Finally, you need to insert the link code into the spot where you want the link to appear. This code must include (and match) the name of your target.

My Personal Tip: I do a lot of copying and pasting when I create page jumps. What I do is open a Word document and paste the code I need onto it. I then alter the two parts of the code to “fit” my blog post, using the names I have chosen. Then I go back and forth from my blog post to my document and copy and paste into the text editor in the appropriate parts, naming my targets and then adding the links using the text from my post. I copy and paste a lot; to me it’s easier, and I need to do this to keep things straight in my head! This practice helps me to focus on what I am doing. It might help you, too.

Page Jumps – Testing Them to See if They Work

Testing your page jumps to make sure they are working is easy. All you have to do is preview your post in a different window, and click on the links. If, for some reason, you are “sent” to the wrong spot, you will need to make corrections to the code.

Page Jumps – A Video Tutorial

Some people would rather watch a video than read, and so, to help you learn how to create page jumps by visually learning, I found this video on YouTube that will help you understand page jumps more clearly. You can watch it below or watch it on YouTube.

Page Jumps – Where I Have Used Them

I used many page jumps when I created my web hosting guide. Considering that I mentioned over a dozen different hosts coupled with the fact that it is 15550 words in length, you can understand why I wanted to include many page jumps in it!

Canadian born and raised, I'm a writer, editor, and teacher. I am also a bit of a perfectionist! I love reading, writing, and helping others.I'm currently involved in several different projects and am working towards my new life goals. I'm also blogging and engaging with many people on social media!

21 Responses to "All About PAGE JUMPS"

Hello Lorraine, I use a super handy editor called UltraEdit which works especially well with editing webpage source code. For instance I created a 23 page website for a client in which I misspelled the name of the company (about 75 times!) and had to correct it. In UltraEdit, you open all the pages in the program, and can do a search and replace within ALL the open files! In less than 20 seconds, I had repaired all 23 pages for the spelling error! It works for any item in the document, whether an HTML tag or otherwise.

It has saved my bacon many times, especially with updating copyright dates annually. That is until I found a handy Javascript to embed in the pages that does the date parsing automaigically!

I realize this is an older blog post, but the tip included in my response is likely of great benefit to many out in the wider audience.

Hi Lorraine, Need some help. I added page jumps to my page, but when the jump occurs a section it is jumping to is usually cut off. Here is a link http://www.kalanipkg.com/industrial-packaging do you mind taking a look and letting me know what I am missing or how to adjust.

Thank you SO much for this. I used to do this back when I owned websites instead of blogs but couldn’t remember how to do it or what it was called to look it up. I have been wanting to do this with a FAQ page I have and finally I am able to get it the way I want. I used the information in this post before I even read all the way down to see the challenge but I’m happy to say I finished the challenge.

About DearBlogger

DearBlogger is a free WordPress resource and community geared towards providing you free and fast advice to build a better blog. DearBlogger was founded in September 2012 in Manhattan by Greg Narayan. Our mission on this site is to provide clearer answers than what's out there currently, and make blogging, advertising, online marketing, web design, eCommerce, and any kind of website creation mainly using WordPress easier for beginners.